Rocking the Hoedown

August 10th, 2008
by Rein Henrichs

We had a great time at the Ruby Hoedown this weekend. The
Hashrocket crew was out in force (and there was much
debauchery in the Hashrocket RV). We got to meet or get better acquainted with
a lot of great rubyists and hear a lot of entertaining, informative talks.

Jim and Joe’s Mock Dialog

Jim Weirich and Joe O’Brien
presented their talk about mocks and stubs in the form of a short play in three
acts. This was very timely for me since mocking properly in tests is area we
have been discussing quite a bit at Hashrocket.

One thing they said that struck a chord was that complex mocks are a code smell
that can clue you in to problems or hot spots for refactoring in the code under
test.

The presentation style was fresh and the tips they provided should be very
valuable to anyone using mocks in testing (which should be everyone).

Ruby Best Practice Patterns

I’m afraid I played a little trick on poor Jeremy and my dear audience. Instead
of spending an hour giving examples of patterns and practices, I thought it
might be fun to take a more satirical slant on the material. The resulting
talk, Unfactoring From Patterns: Job Security Through Code Obscurity,
turned out to be a modest success (if I do say so myself) and I think rather
more entertaining to boot.

I did have time to show a few actual patterns but the dialog during the
question and answer period was especially valuable. David Black, Yehuda Katz
and others made some great points and I really enjoyed getting a chance to
discuss one of my favorite topics with such a receptive and informed audience.

We Ain’t Got No Keynote

Chris decided to forgo the slides to tell us a more personal story about his
growth from a lowly PHP hacker to the successful rubyist, entreprenuer and
open-source champion that he is today. Chris is an exemplar for me of the right
way to go about creating a personal and company brand.

Chris’s years of passion for tinkering, experimenting and exploring really have
payed off in a big way. I think his story could rightly be considered
inspirational. I’m sure a lot of people left his talk and started side projects
this very weekend. I really enjoyed his talk (even if he did tell people not to
buy my book).

Flog Your Tests, Test Your Flog

Testing is such a crucial part of my process that I was very excited to hear
Rick Bradley’s account of his rather epic battle to add tests to flog. The
irony here, of course, is that flog itself is a testing tool.

This talk combined two of my favorite topics: testing and refactoring. Rick’s
war stories had some great takeaways: the importance of integration tests to
characterize the behavior of the existing system, the ways in which code that
is written test first differs from code that is written without tests, the
utter importance of testing all the f–king time. Bryal Liles will have more to
say on that last topic in a bit.

I really can’t say enough about Rick’s talk. Hashrocket often takes on
applications with little or no testing for our Rescue Missions and Rick’s
deliberate, careful, comprehensive methodology is exactly the process we try to
follow when we refactor and resuscitate our clients’ code back to health. Rick
could very well write the Hashrocket Rescue Mission manual.

MIDI Machinations and Hungry Hungry Hippos

Giles Bowkett is a mad genius. Perhaps more importantly, he’s an artist who can
ship. He lured us all to a talk about archaeopteryx, his amazing MIDI
generator, and then proceeded to smack us all with the enlightenment stick.

I won’t spoil his talk for people who haven’t seen it. Suffice it to say that
it was far more than I expected. Giles’s opinions on software development are
unique and somewhat iconoclastic. Be careful, the code he writes might blow
some people’s minds. Giles’s presentation style
is engaging and he can be down right hilarious at times. Also, hippos are
scary!

Wrap It Up!

Taking a road trip down to the Hoedown with the Hashrocket crew was one of the
best conference experiences I’ve had so far. The talks were great, but I think
the after-conference festivities were the real hilight. Watching Obie and Jason
play beer pong on a table constructed of pool noodles (watch the video),
playing werewolf with a crew of drunken rubyists and spending time with some of
my favorite conference friends. Who could ask for more? Also, Jeremy has big
plans for next year’s Hoedown. They involve words like “free” and “Nashville”.
I would be inclined to add “awesome” as well.